several routes to take to digital heaven?

I had a Pioneer DV-525 DVD player modified by Daniel Wright some time ago. Replaced a ton of stuff from input caps, to rectifier diodes, ac receptacle, power supply capacitors etc. I went the whole 9 yards. Big improvement. Sounds pretty sweet and provides a great picture. Worth every penny to me and then some.

But ... I would not compare it to a $10,000 system. Last year, I was able to purchase the Perpetual Technologies gear here on Audiogon for under $2,000. That includes the P-1A (stock), P-3A (modified by Wright) and a custom Modwright power supply. This is attached to a Cal Tech CL-10 CD changer. That system, even with upgraded cables, is well below $4,000 and the modified Pioneer is not as good. It is very good, but not nearly that good.

Based on this admittedly limited experience, I believe you can dramatically improve equipment with modifications. But, you still have the base platform design as the limiting factor. You might be able to skip a tier or two in price through mods, but not much more than that. If you plan to keep the equipment, I think it's worth it. Get as good a base unit as you can afford/justify. If there are two or three that you like equally well, pick the one that can be modified down the road for a relatively cheap major upgrade in performance. My two cents. Good luck.

P.S. I compared the Cal Tech/Perpetual combo against the Pioneer alone and with the Pioneer/Perpetual combo and my comments hold for either case.

Ozfly, thanks for your input; i recently visited the site, www.referenceaudiomods.com, where it discussed its mods of several good transports (in their time), and how its mods moves them into the $10,000 range, particularly the meridian and philips transports.

Whoa! Nice site. You're talking about starting with some pretty nice base units and some extensive mods. So moving up a couple of major price points might indeed put you in the $5-$10k range for comparisons. Thanks for pointing out the site. Good luck.

Viridian, you can rest assured I took no offense; all these sites are really just to have conversations on common subjects; I could never take offense and have used your phrase many times in other areas and smiled when I read yours. I respect your support of vinyl; I cannot get past what I consider laborious and minute preparations to play vinyl and any crackling pop and other noises drive me up the wall as much as fingernails raked across a blackboard; I mentioned Bob Stuart's interviews because his take is no different than those who stand for the proposition that vinyl is the truth and digital is the red-haired stepchild, except in reverse. By the way, I loved camp; went four years to Camp Fuller in Rhode Island, 1963-1967, which provided me with some of my fondest memories of my childhood.